Needs for more efficient and powerful internal combustion engines are ever present. Rotary engines have proven to be important alternatives to conventional piston-type engines.
The efficiency of an engine is based in part on whether it makes full use of the energy available from the expansion of combusted gases. Limitations in the size of the available volume for gas expansion during combustion has been a problem in making full use of the energy available from the combustion of gases in existing rotary engines. Accordingly, one efficiency limitation results when exhaust occurs before the combusted gases have completely expanded, i.e., before the power stroke has completed.
Therefore, a need has arisen for a rotary engine that, through the efficient use of space in a same engine, provides a relatively large volume for gas expansion to take advantage of the available energy from the combustion of gases.